Will it pass the restaurant test?

THINKING of buying a property in fashionable south-west London but not sure where to start? Then contemplate using the Cafe Rouge rule. Or, for that matter, the Pizza Express or Wetherspoons pub rule.

These trendy eating and drinking outlets, and others like them, are a nifty rule-of-thumb indicator to the property status of the area. "Houses and flats in a locale boasting one of these establishments have already peaked in price," according to Richard Bowden, managing director of Bowden Property Services, Wimbledon.

But in those areas lacking the culinary makeover, the properties will be cheaper and those buyers working within a tight budget would do well to look there. Areas such as Wimbledon, Richmond, Barnes, Clapham and Battersea are well endowed with middle to upper-range restaurants and wine bars and this is reflected in the price of property.

Areas at the fringes such as Colliers Wood, Balham, Raynes Park, Teddington and Brentford are more fast food than jet set and, for the moment at least, prices are more modest. But, says Mr Bowden, if they're not quite so sought- after now, they soon will be. "There are a number of undervalued areas like this which are up-and-coming."

Things are moving very fast even in these fringe areas, so that somewhere like Earlsfield, which was not so long ago a "no-man's land" and a poor cousin to Wimbledon, is over-reaching itself to become a member of the big league. (Yes, it does have a Cafe Rouge.) Colliers Wood, Brentford and Balham are not far behind.

"These emerging, slightly less fashionable places are the ones that the first-time buyer should go for," says Mr Bowden. "In somewhere like Brentford the infrastructure - shopping, car parks and sports halls - is being improved. Wimbledon and similarly prestigious areas are now out of many first-timers' price range and there's little point in looking there."

South-west London, with its close proximity to leafy parks and good transport links into central London, is witnessing a property boom that's leaving other parts of London behind. It's where younger people, who like to get into the country at the weekend, are heading. And consequently properties, particularly flats, are becoming more and more scarce.

Agents in the area report that the collapse of the Far-Eastern markets has meant foreign money from places like Hong Kong is moving out of central London and into the cheaper south-western suburbs.

Even so, there are still bargains to be had in the less fashionable areas. While an ordinary two-bedroom terrace house in Wimbledon is on at pounds l58,000, a one-bed starter home in Colliers Wood is up at a surprisingly low pounds 75,000.

What property there is is selling very quickly, with an average turnover time between offer and exchange of four weeks. The advice for buyers wanting to beat the property market is to do their research before setting off to tramp the streets. That means knowing exactly what sort of mortgage you can afford, pinpointing the area and knowing just what sort of property you want. When you see the right place, you won't have to hesitate over buying it.

The extent of the shortage in the area is borne out by the events surrounding the sale of two similar two-bedroom houses in Dryden Road, Wimbledon. The first went on the market a year ago and on its first day four buyers offered the asking price. The house eventually went to the person able to come up with the mortgage first.

Eight months later another almost identical house in the same street was being sold for pounds 30,000 more than the first one. When one of the unlucky would-be buyers of the first house was approached, he snapped it up straightaway.

As a buyer in south-west London, you need to have your wits about you even more than you did during the boom at the end of the 1980s. In those heady days, there was more of a gung-ho attitude to the property market. But according to estate agents, in the sober 1990s people at all stages of the process have worked out buying and selling strategies and are more clued-up and focused than before. Buyers are up against intelligent rivals.

The upside of this is that everything is on an even keel, according to Mr Bowden. "I do not see a collapse of the market in south-west London for all its fevered activity at the moment. But I couldn't say that for the rest of the country."

One infamous practice of the 1980s - gazumping - is, many agents claim, no longer in evidence, at least in that part of London. Christopher Lubbock, of Rolfe East, Chiswick, has detected "a healthy new balance" between buyer and vendor in south-west London. "From it being a vendor's market in the 1980s through to the complete turn-about to a buyer's market, and then back to the vendor briefly last year, it is now nicely in order," he says. "Although things are moving fast, neither party is rushing into things. People want to see value and reliability. If it's not quite right they'll wait."

The recent rises in interest rates have kept the market quieter than it might otherwise have been. In spite of the extra caution advocated, Mr Lubbock still advises buyers in south-west London to "go with their gut feelings about a place because value is already built in these days".

And, he says, buy because you want to live in a place - not as an investment.